Simon is two weeks old today. He marked the occasion by losing his cord stump last night, exposing a very cute little belly button in the middle of his equally cute belly.
While this will make changing and bathing Simon much easier, I find myself bittersweet about the event because I sense that time is racing by and I can’t do anything to slow or stop it.
Where did the past two weeks go? Can’t I stop the clock for just a minute or two? Don’t get me wrong, newborns aren’t the most interesting creatures, and I know intellectually that our best days together lie ahead. And on the nights when Simon had gas pain (before we discovered Infant Mylicon), time seemed to expand exponentially. But on the whole, it’s been a very fast two weeks, two weeks that I’ll never get back.
Soon enough, Simon will be holding his head up, then crawling, then walking, then talking, and then–to quote an old boss and good friend of mine–before I know it I’ll be driving him off to college and wondering where the last 18 years went. I have a whole new understanding of what my mom must have been feeling when she would ask me to just stay five a tiny bit longer. It must be a universal parent thing, and after a lifetime of looking forward to things–to being old enough to drive, to vote, to get married, to live on my own, etc.–it’s odd to begin wishing for time to halt in its tracks.
I hope I can keep these thoughts in mind the next time Simon’s cranky and I’m desperate for the next hour or so to speed by. In the meantime, I’ll be spending a little more time staring at his face today.